Bill Erickson, Systems Developer

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• Bill Erickson, Systems Developer
• Jason Etheridge, PINES System Support Specialist
• Brad LaJeunesse, PINES System Administrator
• Mike Rylander, Database Developer

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A Quick History of the PINES Consortium

• Started as a Y2K project.
• Many libraries were running on antiquated
  automation systems.
• Some libraries were still manual!
• Additionally, the idea of a statewide library
  card had been gaining political support.
• Joining PINES is completely voluntary and free to
  the library system.

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The PINES Consortium Today

• 250 Libraries
• 8 Million Holdings
• 1.5 Million Patrons
• 15 Million Annual Circ

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The PINES Consortium Tomorrow

• 300 Libraries
• 10 Million Holdings
• 2 Million Patrons
• 25 Million Annual Circ

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PINES Management

• Policies are defined by the PINES Executive
  Committee, an elected body of library directors.
• The Georgia Public Library Service (Georgias
  state library) provides helpdesk support, systems
  administration, and training, creating an economy
  of scale.

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So, Where Does Evergreen Come In?

• The end of the contract with our current ILS
  vendor was coming up, and we knew we were not
  happy with what we had.
• We invited the major ILS vendors to Atlanta for
  demonstrations and talks.
• Afterwards, we decided to explore the possibility
  of doing it ourselves.

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The Evergreen Solution

• Open-source software, released under the GPL.
• We did not want to develop just another
  homegrown ILS. We want Evergreen to spread beyond
  Georgia.
• Designed from the ground up to support and scale
  to a state-wide library consortium.
• Assembled a team to design and develop the
  software.

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• In the beginning

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Genesis 11

• Step outside the library world for a moment, and
  examine library data and procedures.
• Is the data driving the procedure, or is the
  procedure driving the data?
• From this, we learn that the data and the
  procedures are orthogonal.
• Do these processes REALLY make any sense, or are
  we just doing this because it is what weve
  always done? Librarians are great at making up
  workarounds that then get grandfathered into
  procedure.

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Genesis 12

• Choose from existing and develop new policies
  that actually meet the needs of the consortium.
• Importance of focus groups, consisting of
  librarians that work the circ desk, do the
  cataloging, know the workflow.
• Pretend it is magic
• Design data containers that model the chosen
  policies.

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Genesis 13

• Find existing open source software that provides
  needed functionality.
• Postgres Database
• Apache Webserver
• XUL/Mozilla Framework
• Jabber (XMPP)
• Ed Summers
• And a bunch of other packages
• Then build what could not be found.

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• Surfs up. (OpenSRF)

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OpenSRF (open surf)

• Service Request Framework.
• OpenSRF Router provides failover and load
  balancing.
• Server libraries exist in Perl and C, client
  libraries exist in Perl, C, and Javascript.
• Provides an HTTP gateway for secure, scalable
  remote access.
• Allows for the development of additional gateway
  interfaces, such as the Open-ILS XML gateway.

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OpenSRF Communication Overview

• All app server processes connect to the jabber
  server.
• All server processes register with the jabber
  router
• All requests for a given application will be
  directed to the jabber router and routed to the
  next server process
• The app server will then respond directly to the
  client, at which point the client has the option
  to keep the OpenSRF session open for stateful
  communication.

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OpenSRF Applications

• Each OpenSRF application implements a specific
  set of logic.
• open-ils.storage
• open-ils.auth
• open-ils.search
• Etc
• Application logic is exposed via a registered
  API.
• open-ils.auth.session.retrieve
• open-ils.storage.cachable.direct.metabib.author_fi
  eld_entry.search_fts.field.atomic
• Etc

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OpenSRF Methods

• Create a useful function.
• Language-specific idioms provide method
  parameters, metadata, and a client response
  handle.
• Register the method with the local OpenSRF
  application instance.

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Benefits

• Provides extensible framework, unlike traditional
  black box ILS modules.
• Allows developers to focus on their primary
  objective implementing business logic.
• What you get for free
• Network communication
• Fault tolerance and load balancing
• Method call parameter validation
• Centralized Logging
• API publishing and revision control
• Session management
• Object caching and persistence
• Centralized application configuration
• And tons more

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For example

• open-ils.supercat
• Leverages published open-ils.storage and
  opensrf.settings APIs.
• Provides access to alternate formats of
  bibliographic records.
• Provides structured access to Open-ILS
  metarecords.
• Basis for publishing interfaces for unAPI,
  OpenSearch, Bookbag, etc.
• initial version written in an afternoon.

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Development Schedule

• Alpha Release July 2005
• Beta Release Spring 2006
• Production Release Summer 2006
• PINES go-live September 2006

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• Questions?